WordPress Themes: Start With a Solid Framework

Why I Created a WordPress Theme Framework by Justin Tadlock is a good look at the reasons why WordPress Theme designers and developers should work with a framework when designing a WordPress Theme. A strong Theme framework creates a solid canvas upon which to build your WordPress Themes. If you are or considering building WordPress […]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Connections Make the Blog and the Community

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone Another treasure trove of knowledge from my series on The Art of the Fan-Based Blog that can help you to be a successful fan blogger is to reach out to your peers, fandom webmasters. You’ve build the community, now it’s time to make those connections pay off. […]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Crazy Fans

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone Anyone who has ever spent time in any fandom for any length of time realizes that there are two inevitability types of fans. The first is that there are always going to be fans who take their enthusiasm about the celebrity or hobby to an unacceptable extreme. […]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Community Wins

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone I can promise you, your site won’t be much fun at all unless you start building a community of loyal readers to interact through comments and help enrich the blogging experience for all of your readers, not just yourself. A huge part of the fandom site experience […]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Copyrights for You and Your Content Sources

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone I know I just recommended aggregating news stories from sources outside of your blog in my series on The Art of the Fan-Based Blog, and that search engines were your friend. They are. However, I cannot stress this enough, be extremely mindful of every single word or […]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Content, Content, Content Part II

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone So you’ve finding all kinds of content for your fandom based upon our previous discussions. You’ve found a trough of information to flow into your blog. Now what? How do you get all that information into your blog, and should you? Do you need to publish everything? […]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Content, Content, Content

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone Content. Ah, now we’re getting to the fun part in our series on The Art of the Fan-Based Blog. After all that technical mumbo-jumbo, we finally get to talk about the one thing we want to talk about – our fandom! Before you jump into the deep […]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Create a Game Plan

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone Are you ready to plunge into your own fandom blog? Then it’s time you started thinking more like a webmaster than a fan. A fan is all agog with the thrills and spills of their star, but hosting a fandom blog means making a plan and sticking […]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Competition Means Collaboration

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone The first and most important step before even starting a fan blog is to find out the dynamics of your fandom as it currently exists online. Is there an official site? Are there message boards out there dedicated to your subject? Are there already other fan sites? […]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Cultivate Your Passion

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone If you’re going to build a fan site, it’s assumed that you have a passion for the subject of the blog. You don’t have to know everything about the subject of your site, but you do have to really be passionate about this journey you are about […]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone DB Ferguson is the webmaster of No Fact Zone, a Stephen Colbert-centric news blog and fan site. DB and her husband live in a tragically hip loft in downtown Dallas, Texas, with their 2 cats and 11 tarantulas. By day, DB works as a purchasing agent in […]

Introducing the Art of the Fan-Based Blog Article Series

I’m a Trekkie. For the uninformed, this means I’m nuts about Star Trek. To misquote Eddie Izzard (I’m a fan of his, too), I’m not a wacko, obsessed Trekkie. I’m an executive Trekkie. The high class, normal type of fan. This means that while I love reading Star Trek related blogs, websites and fan forums, […]

Join the SOB Birthday Party with Liz Strauss

I’ve been in Hawaii for Hawaii Geek Week studying social the Aloha way, including a day long session in the Social Media Club Hawaii Workshop, and am confused as many of you about this the new “social” on the web and what it really means. I woke up this morning with part of the definition […]

Comment Spam Alert: I Read a Similar Article

Bloggers should now be familiar with the blog comment spam ruse of “X wrote an interesting post” to lure us into thinking this is a legitimate trackback, and now comes “I read a similar article also named…” to lure us into thinking this comment is legitimate. As Tony Hung illustrated, the comment spammers use a […]

Remstate In Series WordPress Plugin for Article Series Updated

The In Series WordPress Plugin by Remstate has been updated recently. The Plugin makes writing article series and connecting them together in a series simple and easy, adding a link list of the articles in the series to each post within the series. I’m a major fan of the popular, In Series WordPress Plugin, especially […]